More pew for your credit

Blast from the past

Index: Suspended animation | Different times | Some assembly required | Trust the Plan | The Lennart Manoeuvre | Cloak and Railguns

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From his position inside the mobile crane’s control tower, Captain Lennart took one good look around. Below him, the vessel was being refurbished, fitted with new weapons and her somewhat aging arsenal, upgraded.

His sight traveled across the huge farming fields full of green, red and purple. Multiple homes and barns dotted the areas between these farms, interconnected by roads or monorails. Kren was one of the rare planetoids, small moons which had been spared the magnetic anomalies, so common for Fringe Space.

Trucks full of produce floated above the fields whose crops were now due to be harvested. Drones and even farmers flying on their grav bikes, harvested one vacfoam basket after another with produce, slowly but efficiently changing the field’s color from veggie to beautiful, black earth. Then more trucks came and after quickly flying combines plowed the earth once, these deposited plenty of compost and fertilizer. The combines then turned the earth around one more time, burying the soil food; he caught a gentle, distant whiff of manure and smiled.

There were many animal farms on Kren and they provided farmers with plentiful supply of high quality, natural fertilizer. Of course, said animals were well fed; they ate the vegetables unsuitable for off-planet export or devoured the leaves and plant stems, which would’ve been otherwise discarded.

Those farming fields, where the soil got “tired” after two full harvests was where farmers planted Martian buffalo grass. That provided plenty of hay for the short, mellow Kren winters and supplemented the otherwise rich diet these well cared for animals were fed with.

Lennart followed some of the trucks as they floated slowly in the direction of their colony’s starport area. A container factory was built right next to the small landing plots, providing the farmers with multiple packaging options. In most cases they reused their old containers, but for long hauls, stronger, more secure stasis units were required.

He was made aware of the fact that this factory’s nano-printers could in fact produce parts for his ship. Although those could be simple bulkheads or small armor plates, nevertheless, that would greatly speed up the reconstruction. Even if what Silvia said was true and the pirates avoided Kren’s defenses, they could still inflict plenty of damage to surrounding colonies and outposts. Nevermind all the supplies and salvage they’d acquire, or the priceless lives lost with each boarded Terran cargo vessel...

The area around IMS Revenant had been rapidly transformed into a construction & repair bay. Lennart again marveled at what he’d help organize, with a boyish smile on his lips. For a few minutes he observed how the team of starship construction capable colonists, aided by a dozen space bikers from the Boomers SMC, lowered yet another torpedo launcher into the Revenant’s dorsal multi-turret.

After much deliberation he’d decided to adopt this design and instead of fitting the turrets with a medium size weapons, he opted for another setting altogether. Each of the Revenant’s multi-turrets had two, 533mm anti-cap ship torpedo launchers and a 50mm “Longbow” railgun, which they could bear upon any target.

Indeed, he could opt for a beastly cannon like a 88mm railgun or one of those brand new Samosek lasers, but that would significantly increase his expenses and lower his warship’s mission profile.

Compared to the quickly firing, heat efficient 50mils, the 88s would draw too much power from the Revenant’s already tasked to its limit main fusion core. No, the big guns were not designed for a vessel of this size; these long barreled 50s were basically the same guns colonial militia tank units fitted on their light tanks. The main difference was – these cannons operated in space, they had higher power draw and their longer super mag coils necessitated the installment of bigger heatsinks.

For the port and starboard weapon emplacements, he ordered eight armor piercing laser cannons. Those he aimed to employ from close range, unleash broadsides of hull-melting weapons fire. The new ship’s new targeting computer could track even fast-moving targets like dropships or boarding pods.

Revenant’s original armament consisted of four, fitted with 30mm railguns turrets, installed by twos on the ship’s bow and stern. The cannons were still good, perfectly capable of delivering ample amount of flack, deadly for tiny ships, and could even blow holes into the unarmored hulls of bigger vessels.

To save some funds and further increase the lethality of the 30mils, Lennart ordered them upgraded. These friendly weapon dealers owned a number of cheap, easily compatible for these widely used cannons, mods. He intended to use the 30mils to lob bouts of HEAS (high explosive anti-ship shells) at the enemy. Therefore, the cannons were outfitted with auto-fire modules, chem coolant tanks, a rigid rapid reload system and fitted with larger heatsinks.

Their otherwise standard size munition bays, Lennart ordered re-designed, up-armored and their capacity increased two fold. Incidentally, the “Boomers” offered him a special munition deal since he had already spent an excess of twenty thousand credits, acquiring quite a hefty chunk of their inventory. In the end, IMS Revenant’s munition bays were loaded with their best, handmade HEAS shells, brand spanking new, neatly packed into reusable ammunition crates, ready to be fired at a moment’s notice.

This was highly understandable; after showering them with money, the gun runners were beyond accommodating and helpful. Tim Ocean was ecstatic after Lennart ordered not one, but six crates of nuclear tipped torps, multiple laser cannons, upgrades, thousands of 30mil special rounds and the two brand new 50s.

The ship’s biggest guns were top quality, with at least two attachments per weapon system, but everything was part of the SMC’s list of promotional merchandise and disassembled. He, of course, immediately offered the Boomers another lucrative deal – he’d hire many of their best weapon specialists to properly install the guns while the warship was being repaired and her main systems refitted.

Lennart suspected and for quite a long while, that these bikers intentionally sold many of their weapons in parts so that others might pay them for assembly. That was not the case; he’d learned and from Tim himself, that most colonies had plenty of capable engineers, tech savvy colonists even, and it was this that prompted them to offer such deals.

People were open to buying top quality parts, exceptionally well manufactured munitions or even brand new armor plating. They’d pay top credit for that, saving their leftover money for new ship or mecha systems, then assembled everything by themselves. Like Tim said – you get the best bang or in this case pew, for your cred.

Lennart suspected that he won’t be able to afford the luxury of wasting precious time; every day he wasted, the filthy Clanners grew stronger. They were not stupid and probably had already amassed their forces, two or more lone ships forming into larger raiding bands. He hoped that all of those would find it quite difficult to freely move about, preying upon ship traffic. They had to scavenge for every blob of fuel, fix their damaged vessels with salvage and ration their food.

Already the messages Silvia’s friends sent to their neighbors were having some effect; all incoming vessels were warned and advised to avoid the area or take longer, evasive courses. Yes, that would significantly increase their fuel expenses, but... dead traders made no profit. At least that old spacer was already close and his cargo ship had just been picked up by Kren C & C.

He was well aware of the fact that now all vessels traveling through this area of space would suffer delays. Better safe than floating gutted in zero-G, however. Lennart first made a hand sign to catch the attention of his beautiful assistant and then shouted from the crane’s window:

“Silvia, is Josh The Posh going to land anytime soon? We still need those engine and reactor parts, or our weapon dealers won’t be able install the backup power lines on schedule!”

Silvia was floating with her brand new grav belt, just a few feet to the left of him. Safely away from any of the working machinery or flying about SMC shuttles, two of which were now lowering another weapon into the Revenant’s multi-turret.

“He’s coming captain, we just exchanged messages through our local G-net node. Josh’s ship is still one hour away and his crew, on full combat alert.” – Answered his question Silvia with creeping concern easily felt seeping through her voice, while she typed another message on the holo-keyboard of her PDA.

“Was it the same group of pirates who attacked him? Are he and his crew well? Did they suffer casualties or sustain heavy damage?” – Lennart quickly launched a barrage of new questions at her.

“He wrote and I quote ‘a scratch here and there, nothing serious’, captain. Crew is fine, the FSS Nelson traveled with overstrengthened shields most of the time since they anticipated an attack. There is something else...” – She floated closer, fixing her fluttering hair with one hand and leveled her PDA so he could read Josh’s response to her message.

It read that he was attacked by two Aleska raid ships and one corvette decloaked on his stern, mere seconds before he hypered to Krenara system.

“Wonderful... They had probably scavenged that cloaking shield from a Jaern ship.” – More softly spoke Lennart while scratching his chin, under the concerned look of Silvia.

“The fact that they have a fully fledged capital ship, does not concern you more, than their advanced stealth capabilities, captain?”

“We have anti-capship torps, mademoiselle.” – Smiled he and pointed at the second torpedo launcher which was actually the last weapon lowered into Revenant’s ventral multi-turret.

“If your friend has all the items we ordered,” – Lennart checked the note projected on her PDA’s holo-screen and then pointed at their new warship – “we’ll be flying circles around the clanners!”

“Not to mention that most cloaking shields can boast only half the field strength which standard generators of the same size can project. Now, could you be so kind and check upon that fuel shipment we ordered, they should’ve been here already.”

While Silvia smiled back after he reassured her of their success and floated away, engaged in a furious linking over G-net, Lennart allowed himself a gentle frown. It was never that easy, dealing with clanner filth. He spent the next half an hour watching on his own PDA a projection of the C & C sensors, which tracked all ships in range of the colony.

There was the big green dot of FSS Nelson that moved ever closer to Kren, escorted by a squadron of twelve starfighters. This was part of the local CN fighter wing called the “Daystars;” flying on their generational fighters, those were pretty good pilots, he was told. Not only Silvia boasted of her neighbor’s skill, even Tim Ocean stated that the Daystars were an ace outfit.

There was a problem, however – they were not nearly numerous enough to cover all patrol routes, meaning that there were holes in the colony’s outer detection grid. Gaps through which sneaky vessels like those nimble Aleska raid ships could handily slither through.

A swarm of tiny vessels, some no bigger than dropships, exited the wormhole leading to Cav asteroid colony a few minutes later. Two of those were the much anticipated to arrive fuel carriers; laden with containers full of H2 fuel, the shipment he asked for was finally in view. The two ships had escort craft, four modified for war shuttles and two dropships, refurbished into makeshift gunships. Originally, he was told, the small refinery which supplied most colonies in these parts only flew with their jerry-rigged shuttles in escort.

Now, following his recommendation, they had hired a duo of merc pilots. Those were flying makeshift, laden with multiple missile launchers, rotating gun turrets and encased in thick armor plating, heavy fighters. People called those gunships or heavies, and Lennart would very much love to have a full squadron of them under his command!

Both Josh’s vessel and the fuel convoy were almost in orbit of the colony when the pirates attacked. Sliding out of hyperspace, the two raid vessels attempted to board FSS Nelson and the corvette aimed to tractor the fuel carriers. Lennart swiped over his PDA, immediately contacted Kren’s C & C and then hastily shouted a stern command:

“C & C, order the crews of those fuel carriers to ditch their ships and then fire a concentrated barrage of all your anti-orbital railguns at them! If we deny them fuel, the Aleska will back off. Wasting precious resources when there are no significant gains to be made, is not their modus operandi!”

He could hear the controllers shouting his order, the exchange of comm links between escort shuttles and gunships, then received another burst of data.

The two raid ships were breathing down Josh’s neck, one had its grappling arm extended, ready to initiate boarding operations. The pirates deployed one small detachment of starfighters, space mecha and armed dropships. To Lennart their orders were more than obvious – they stalled the escorts and Kren’s defenders.

“Link controller, patch me through all of our ships!”

He heard a couple of buzzes, clicks and then a notification that he was linked popped up on his PDA’s holo-screen. Lennart watched how the pirate starfighters moved about, their pilots were obviously given stern commands to not exhaust too much fuel.

It took him a few more seconds, and while the enemy corvette got even closer, her tractor beam operators about to activate their devices, he gave another order:

“Shuttles, you pick up the escape pods, gunboats, cover them and then all of you get as close as you can to the FSS Nelson. Krenian starfighters; your vessels and her point defense battery will deter the Clanners from pushing harder or commuting to any further attacks.”

If someone else would’ve argued, attempted to circumvent his command, the “colonials” were far too wise and experienced to waste precious star-seconds. Moreover, many of them had fought against the pirate clans of Fringe space for decades and knew that Lennart’s words rang true.

Counted seconds later, a barrage of railgun projectiles left the barrels of ten 88s and screeching through the air, reached lower obit. The corvette moved aside, her captain wisely choosing to preserve the ship than risk getting riddled with holes. Aleska navigators were good and semi-successfully managed to evade the giant plasma ball, which formed after the two fuel carries got hit.

Just as he had previously assured Silvia, that Jaern cloaking shield was weak and after collapsing, the Aleska corvette took some damage. Undeterred by the withering fire coming from both starfighters and the Nelson however, the two raid ships brazenly continued with their attack. After successfully grappling all escape pods, the escort shuttles and their defenders, the two gunboats, joined forces with Kren’s starfighters.

In fifteen short seconds, the clanners lost nearly a dozen of their own fighters, plus one dropship and two space mecha. Losses in machines, personnel and worst of all, fuel – every second they now spent here, engaged in a prolonged dogfight would cost them more precious fuel. To further deter the now wavering enemy, Lennart quickly issued another order:

“To FSS Nelson and all escort ships, you stay exactly where you are when the shells arrive! C & C, launch your second barrage; aim close, but not directly at the raid ships. Give them more reasons to punch in an exit hyperjump! We are not yet ready for this battle and they? The filth, as nasty as they are, they are prudent and would not want a long brawl.”

Another barrage of railgun shells boomed through the atmo and, exactly like Lennart had predicted, the clanner in charge ordered his forces to retreat. Just as was their custom, there were no intimidating links sent, promising doom to the Terrans over open channels. Those were Aleska, only among their lowliest, inexperienced star warriors, were such who’d waste time, engage in a worthless battle of words.

Captain Lennart ordered all ships to land immediately; their pilots had to do so safely and using the least amount of fuel possible. Now, to go into battle, they had to scrounge every blob of fuel there was on this colony, while at the same time finish all of Revenant’s modifications with breakneck speed.

The clanners probably suffered from severe lack of fuel, otherwise they wouldn’t have committed to such a bold attack. Now they lurked in some of the outlying systems, a place conveniently close to Krenara, which they were able to reach without expanding all of their modest fuel reserves. They’d lurk, send out fighter patrols and hope to board, capture enough Terran vessels and replenish at least part of their fuel supply. Then the bastards would go for that refinery and capture it, thereby securing all the fuel they’d need to maintain fully operational.

Denied their closest fuel source, all Terran colonies would be forced to retract all their patrols, which would then untie the clanners’ hands, and give them free reign over this tiny patch of space. Sometime later, another CN force would arrive and deal with these leftovers, but not before a considerable damage was inflicted upon all neighboring colonies.

Many of those would suffer food or medicine shortages, not enough to cause major harm, but for Lennart every life lost was a tragedy. Moreover, the perspective crewmen he picked on G-net and linked earlier, it would now be nearly impossible for them to reach Krenara. Things got complicated and all it took was but a star-minute...

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